From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 17, no. 3, November 2002.

By Pesi Fonua.

There’s a problem on ‘Atā, Tonga’s prison island, according to prisoners, who are serving terms there—they are very sad there is no television for them to watch.

Apart from that, ‘Atā lives up to its listing in the Ministry of Police report on prisons as being: “spartan, but extremely pleasant surroundings.”

Matangi Tonga visited the island prison because of a world-wide press interest from as far away as Germany and the United Kingdom to our story ‘‘Atā, island of children’, Matangi Tonga September 2002, reporting that young offenders were being sent to the isolated island to separate them from hardened criminals in the main prison, Hu‘atolitoli.

But we found that the last child offender left ‘Atā in mid-October about two weeks before our visit, and according to the Acting Superintendant of Prisons, Moleni Taufa, there are no minor offenders in prison in the whole of Tonga at the moment. Seven of the eight prisoners we met on the island were imprisoned for petty theft and house breaking, and they were all in their early 20s, while an older inmate, a New Zealander, was just visiting the island to mow the lawn.

We were welcomed to ‘Atā with an umu feast and a number of speeches, in Tongan, and in English for the benefit of a visiting Sydney correspondent for The Guardian, London. Three messages that came out loud and clear from the warden and the prisoners were: firstly, the warden wanted to have one day off because of all the hard work he had done to prepare for our arrival; secondly, the prisoners thought that they should have a TV with a video to watch; and thirdly, they wanted to come to Tongatapu for the weekend to see their families, and to go to hospital.

Moleni, in his quiet, but obviously effective ways of dealing with prisoners, whispered to me that he would approve the first and the last requests, “and if I had the resources I would buy them a TV, because at the moment they think that they have been treated unfairly since there are TVs for prisoners in other prisons.” However, because there is no electrical generator on the island, providing a television would be a major expense for the poorly-funded prison system.

Captive

Once a person was sentenced to imprisonment, he would remain captive until he served his time, disregarding whether he was kept in a four-wall maximum security cell or on an idyllic tropical island, where he could roam freely, eat pawpaw, drink from coconuts, go fishing or sit in the shade and dream, he would still remain a prisoner.

That was Moleni’s philosophy, when we commented on how beautiful ‘Atā was, how relaxing the environment, and how amazing it was for one prison warden to sleep together in one hut with seven other prisoners, while the warden appeared to be armed with nothing but one bush knife.

Moleni said that the Tongan situation was unique because there was still respect for authority and this was fortunate because Tonga did not have the financial resources to build a big secure prison compound.

He said that there was an understanding between the prisoners and the prison establishment, “that the society wants them to be punished, and the officers are there to do a job, to keep them and to look after them.”

He said there had been a number of instances where a prisoner would escape from the open prisons and go out and commit an offence to square off a dispute, and then return and give himself up. “They realise that we are their one last hope, and we are there to help, and to take them back to their family and to the society.”